Doctor Who: More Continuity Issues with Death
By David Hill
Continuity is, at times, an issue on Doctor Who. Events will be depicted at the beginning of the show, then the Doctor will go back and change something, which should affect the latter actions. Only, those later actions, which would be changed by the Doctor travelling back in time, remain. People who died, whose deaths would be changed if the events in the past did not unfold, remain dead. Ah, continuity!
Such was the case in Saturday’s episode. During Under the Lake, we watched as Moran and Pritchard were killed, turning into ghosts. Along with them was a creature who we would later learn to be Prentiss, an undertaker who was sent to inter the Fisher King, who had created these ghosts to amplify a signal that would call his kind to Earth, helping him to enslave the planet.
Naturally, the Doctor foils this plan, destroying the Fisher King as he creates the flood that, in turn, created the lake they were under. Yes, there were casualties along the way, as O’Donnell is killed by the Fisher King to become yet another ghost, amplifying his signal further. However, the plan was thwarted, and everyone lived happily ever after.
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Except, that did not happen. Moran and Pritchard were still ghosts, trapped in the Faraday cage, despite the Fisher King being destroyed in 1980. While it could be argued that this makes sense, given that they were killed before the events of Before the Flood, the actual demise of the Fisher King some 239 years prior to the events of Under the Lake may have been enough to keep those deaths from happening in the first place.
Likewise, given that the timing of the death of the Fisher King, compared to when O’Donnell was killed, was a bit nebulous, her death may not have happened either. Keep in mind that the Doctor accidentally went back by one half hour, instead of heading back to the future as he intended. When he confronted the Fisher King, it was shortly after he, O’Donnell and Bennett left Prentiss on his own. They did discover the undertaker’s body, then, after the Doctor secured Bennett aboard the TARDIS, he had his showdown with the creature. Was this enough time for the Fisher King to kill O’Donnell?
Even if it had been, would the Doctor still have been able to find the Fisher King skulking about under the temple, hiding in the shadows instead of on its way back from its latest killing? Is it possible that, aside from the untimely demise of Prentiss, something that would not weight too heavily upon the Doctor, considering his feelings about that species.
In the end, we were left with only three survivors, and the Doctor and Clara were free to continue their adventures. Likewise, we are left with yet another continuity issue, where the deaths on Doctor Who may not have actually happened, especially given the events of the past.